Actor Irrfan Khan has denied reports that he is playing Bhupen Hazarika in Kalpana Lajmi’s upcoming biopic,saying the role was never offered to him.

There were reports that after enjoying critical acclaim for his performance in ‘The Lunchbox’,Irrfan has the Bhupen Hazarika biopic in his kitty.

“I was never offered the role. I would love to play him onscreen. He was a great human being with a huge body of work. People like him should be remembered always. But the script should be really strong,” Irrfan told PTI in an interview.

Filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi will direct the biopic on her relationship with the legendary musician,who died on November 5,2011. It will be produced by Pooja Bhatt.

The 46-year-old Irrfan bagged the national award this year for for his portrayal of an athlete-turned-dacoit in “Paan Singh Tomar”. A NSD graduate,Irrfan started his career with small screen and then shifted to silver screen.

Asked if there is any character which he would like to portray,Irrfan said,”I have many areas where I would love to work. I want to work on music,action and children cinema. I also want to do many more love stories and sports film.”

The crossover actor,who has been equally successful in Hollywood projects like “Life of Pi”,”The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Namesake”,feels it is time Bollywood started expanding its reach.

“Hollywood films are trying to connect with universal audience and they are successful in that. We are only catering to Indian audiences or NRIs. Our films have a limited reach. We need to expand our horizons and evolve our language which connects the universal audience to our cinema,” he added.

The “Namesake” star will next be seen in Anup Singh’s Indo-European venture “Qissa”,where he will play a Sikh in the post-Partition era.